…and a tone that mixes the uncomfortably chipper with the grimly dark, until you’re not even sure that the happy bits are truly happy
Errant Signal – “Blips: A Not So Spooky Halloween Warm Up”
One thing I’m working on atm is focusing more on light things, instead of dark. This is no easy task, as I’ve spent a huge part of my life focusing on the darkness! But after a couple of experiences while drunk/high, I realised that I’ve pretty much explored the full extent of darkness. So it doesn’t have anything to offer me anymore. And also how, as interesting as it’s been, I know for sure that there’s so much more to explore with light things.
After all, darkness is simply the absence of light. It’s something missing, while light is the presence of… well, anything. In the most literal sense, everything we see, and therefore almost everything we know, is because of light. But in the more abstract sense, the volume of things that could comfortably fit into the category of “darkness” is far outweighed by those that are light.
So that’s what I’m moving towards. Now, if the chance to veer into dark territory comes up, I ignore that path and carry on towards brighter things. And I can feel the effects of my efforts already: my thoughts feel less negative, I feel more connected to people, and the things I’m seeking out are generally happier, so I myself feel happier too. I do keep catching myself going into the darkness again, but I pull myself back. Even while writing this now, I’m editing out lines that could go off into bleak tangents, and it’s allowing me to stay focused and follow my original plan, instead of this piece being swallowed up by the dark stuff.
It’s also helping me understand how much of an effect it has on you, being subjected to darkness like that, even when it’s coming from your own mind — and how much stuff there is out there that can drag you back into it. I think this comes from the resistance I feel to darkness now, almost a new intuition that I didn’t really have before. I could go into detail about why that might be, but I don’t really need to anymore, nor do I really want to.
I learned about trauma dumping a couple of months ago: It’s when a (usually neurospicy) person who went through some heavy stuff can just start talking about it in graphic detail, without really being aware of the effect it has on someone else. That other person doesn’t have the same experience, so they lack the years of mental and emotional hardening that are needed to be able to digest something like that. The end result is that, for the other person, they end up being swallowed up by the darkness too. And now that I’m moving away from the darker stuff, I can recognise that and stop it before it happens to me, and before I do it to someone else.
I alluded to the reason I’ve been able to stop just now: I don’t really need it anymore. I’ve already worked out the darkness in me, and I’ve fully explored all the other darkness that I could ever take on, so there’s nothing left to do there. And so, there’s no reason to keep going back to it.
Sure, it’s more familiar, and we like things that are familiar. For example, if you’re predisposed to sadness or anxiety, sometimes you might find yourself in a low-level form of it, and want to stay in that state for a while. It can actually be quite calming, how comfortable that feeling is. But I think the only way to really change things is to make new, different feelings more familiar. If I can do that, then perhaps I’ll be less comfortable with feeling empty, and more comfortable with feeling content.
This wasn’t meant to be how this piece would go. It’s not the insight I had when I heard that quote from the start, so let’s get into some real darkness for a moment, just for this paragraph. I was gonna talk about how, with my upbringing, I’m not sure myself if the happy bits were truly happy, neither at the time, or looking back in my memories. And about how that would have translated into my major trauma experience, when I went through my psychosis, and how it still lingers when I’m triggered, when the uncertainty of how any joy I believe I’m feeling could actually be something far more sinister…
Now, I wonder what you’re remember from this piece. We have far more control over our own minds than we realise. That little bit of darkness, is that the main takeaway, is that what you’d want to linger? If you choose to keep that part, what happens to the rest? The realisation that chasing after darkness isn’t necessary; the insight into some of the enormous benefits of moving towards the light; the knowing that what you choose to know is up to you. What do you want to keep?